Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Giving digital images an artful twist isn't anything new in the computer world, but leave it to Alien Skin Software to take the technique to another level of elegance For those of you unfamiliar with Alien Skin, the company makes high-quality plug-ins for PC and Macintosh image editing programs....

The software industry isn't what it used to be. Open source software, globalization and outsourcing have irrevocably changed the sector and the skills needed by those who choose to work in it. That's the reason given by the Western branch of a major Eastern university when it announced last week a new degree program that gives its students the necessary skills to succeed in the brave new world of software...

More than one third of the Web analytics market will be upgrading, replacing or deploying systems in the next 12 months, which will create new opportunities for application vendors, according to a report released Tuesday by Jupiter Research The survey of executives found that 12 percent of respondents said they plan to upgrade or replace their Web ...

With Apple grabbing all the headlines of late with its iPhone, it's difficult for other spiffy mobiles to garner any mindshare in the market. That's a shame because a recent offering by Samsung deserves some attention The new cell phone -- Samsung's answer to Motorola's Razr -- is called the Sync (a.k.a. SGH-a707) and it contains quite an array of ...

Last November, the Librarian of Congress adopted half a dozen exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), among them one that might give cell phone phone users greater freedom to move between carriers with their mobile devices That exemption allows users to legally unlock their cell phones, according to two attorneys with Banner & Wi...

For the past three years, a Chicago consulting firm has assumed a Grinch-like role with its annual estimate of worker productivity losses attributable to the Super Bowl. Those losses, though, may actually be gains for many businesses, according to the firm's top executive Money lost due to productivity declines during the two weeks leading up to th...

Some bloggers amaze me -- not by what they say, but by how much they say. It seems to me sometimes that a lot of these guys must be sitting in front of their keyboard 18 hours a day filling screen after screen with their prose Maybe the moles of electrons they produce every day is better described as typing than writing, but their dedication can't...

Consumers got their first official look Tuesday at Microsoft's new operating system Vista. Businesses, though, have been able to eyeball the software since November of last year, and eyeballing seems to be all they're doing with the new OS "Among my colleagues, none have installed Vista, which is understandable, because it is a new operating system...

Browser usage numbers for 2006 are beginning to appear on the Web, and for the first time in many moons the market share of Microsoft's dominant offering, Internet Explorer, has dipped below 80 percent While Internet Explorer's star was sinking, its chief competitor's, Mozilla Firefox, was ascending. Its market share climbed from 9.50 percent in Ja...

High-tech employment made a strong showing in 2006. Average salaries were on the rise and demand for IT professionals was robust, according to a salary survey released Wednesday by Dice.com, a Web site for high-tech employment opportunities "2006 has been our first full year of strong demand," John Estes, vice president of Robert Half Technology in...

Meet Alexandra, the commercial says. She likes her computer. After she plants a smooch on her computer's display, a caption adds, maybe too much Suddenly, Alexandra is called away from her office. Enter Ulf, a "Silent Bob" type. People think he may be responsible for computer problems in the office, we're warned....

It is is a dream come true for energy seekers: a portable energy source that outperforms the best lithium-ion batteries on the market and produces 10 times the power of lead-acid batteries at half the cost -- and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals Is the technology being developed by EEStor the future of vehicle power or another unde...

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is pushing video -- on the Internet, on portable media players, even on cell phones. What's omitted by many enthusiastic purveyors of this electronic marvel, though, is that the digital video scene is a jungle of befuddling and confusing formats, a system more conducive to frustration than elation That jungle...

Traffic to blog pages at the top 10 newspaper sites jumped 210 percent in December compared to the same month in 2005 Moreover, blogs garnered 13 percent of all traffic to the sites during the month, compared to only 4 percent in December 2005, according to findings released Wednesday by Nielsen//NetRatings, a media and market research firm based i...

Monitor size is like real estate. You can never get enough of it. That's what I thought until I got a gander at Gateway's mammoth 24-inch HD LCD flat-panel display. Working with this monitor is like computing on a billboard Once I got my bearings -- I'm used to using a 17-inch LCD, so the transition to this behemoth was like being plopped in the mi...

More job seekers than ever descended on employment Web sites during the first week of the new year, according to an online competitive intelligence service Visits to electronic emporiums for employment climbed 31 percent during the week of January 6 compared to the same period a year ago, Hitwise reported last week....

Network neutrality -- an issue that created a firestorm of controversy on Capitol Hill last year -- will be on the congressional agenda again in 2007 thanks to Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) Those legislators filed this week what they're calling "The Internet Freedom Preservation Act," which they say will ensure all conten...

There are pundits who say loyalty was stillborn on the Internet, but Keynote Systems isn't one of them The San Mateo, Calif., provider of on-demand test and measurement products for gauging mobile and online performance reports that loyalty to big Net brands solidified last year, as did those brand's market share....

When Apple introduces a new version of a product, it's usually undertaken with some buzz-inducing design flair that fires up the imagination and whets the appetite for consumption. That iss not the case with its new MacBook offerings Instead of fiddling with the good looks of the MacBook, the 1 Infinite Loop crew have focused their desire to excel ...

Within five years, cable and satellite television providers will be facing a formidable competitor in their market: the Internet By 2011, TV programming delivered over consumer broadband connections will be a "viable alternative to cable," according to a report released Wednesday by Forrester Research....